In this photo taken Sunday, April 27, 2014, Ubah Mohammed Abdule, 33, sheds tears as she talks about her son Yahya Abdi, outside her hut in the Shedder refugee camp near the town of Jigjiga, in far eastern Ethiopia. The Somali mother's home is a small shelter with a frame of sticks covered by ragged blankets on the dusty grounds of a refugee camp but it was to her that her 15-year-old son Yahya Abdi wanted to travel to on an impossible journey as a stowaway on a plane from California. (AP Photo/Elias Asmare)

Photo: Elias Asmare, Associated Press

In this photo taken Sunday, April 27, 2014, Ubah Mohammed Abdule,...

Image 3 of 4

In this photo taken Sunday, April 27, 2014, Ubah Mohammed Abdule, 33, center, poses for a photograph with her son Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, 8, left, and daughter Neshad Yusuf Ahmed, 5, center, outside her hut in the Shedder refugee camp near the town of Jigjiga, in far eastern Ethiopia. The Somali mother's home is a small shelter with a frame of sticks covered by ragged blankets on the dusty grounds of a refugee camp but it was to her that her 15-year-old son Yahya Abdi wanted to travel to on an impossible journey as a stowaway on a plane from California. (AP Photo/Elias Asmare)

Photo: Elias Asmare, Associated Press

In this photo taken Sunday, April 27, 2014, Ubah Mohammed Abdule,...

Image 4 of 4

In this photo taken Sunday, April 27, 2014, Ubah Mohammed Abdule, 33, center, sweeps the floor outside her hut as her son Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, 8, left, looks on in the Shedder refugee camp near the town of Jigjiga, in far eastern Ethiopia. The Somali mother's home is a small shelter with a frame of sticks covered by ragged blankets on the dusty grounds of a refugee camp but it was to her that her 15-year-old son Yahya Abdi wanted to travel to on an impossible journey as a stowaway on a plane from California. (AP Photo/Elias Asmare)

Shedder Refugee Camp, Ethiopia -- The Somali woman lives in a stick hut covered by ragged blankets in this dusty refugee camp. It was here that her 15-year-old son wanted to travel on a perilous journey as a stowaway on a plane from California.

Ubah Mohammed Abdule hasn't seen her boy - who was hospitalized in Hawaii after landing there last week in the wheel well of a jetliner - for eight long years.

Clutching her black-and-white head covering, she wept Sunday as she stood before the flimsy shelter holding her meager possessions and spoke about her son Yahya Abdi.

She was alarmed, she said, by the dangerous journey the teenager undertook. Those who stow away in wheel wells of airplanes have little chance of surviving, and many who attempt it are Africans desperate for a better life in Europe or America.

Yahya had been unhappy in California and desperately missed his mother, according to those who know his family. So on April 20, he hopped a fence at San Jose International Airport and climbed into the wheel well of a jetliner. It was bound for Hawaii, the opposite direction of Ethiopia. Somehow he survived the subzero temperatures and lack of oxygen. He has not spoken publicly.

"I knew he was an intelligent boy who has strong affections for me. I also knew he always wanted to see me, but I know his father won't let them contact me at all," Abdule said.

The boy's father has lied to their three children, the mother said, telling them that she's dead.

"The father of Yahya first took the children away from me to Sudan. Then he came back to Somalia and demanded my consent for him to take the children to the U.S. if I want a formal divorce. I was not OK with that and said no," Abdule said through tears. "Finally, he took all three of my children to the U.S. without my knowledge."

The father, Abdulahi Yusuf, said in a statement Sunday issued through a family spokesman in California that his son was "struggling adjusting to life" in America.

The father said he plans to fly to Hawaii soon to reunite with his son and is "excited to bring him back home to his family in California." He said the family was "deeply concerned" when the boy went missing and was relieved to hear he was safe.

Abdule, 33, moved into the refugee camp in early 2010, leaving behind the Somali capital of Mogadishu, where heavy fighting was occurring. She earns a small income selling vegetables in the camp market.

Abdule said she wants to leave the camp and reunite with her children and has asked the Ethiopian government and the U.N. refugee agency to help her do so.

Abdule has passed her first interview with the U.N. refugee agency's list of those who might qualify to immigrate to America, said a legal protection officer at the refugee camp, Abdlrasak Abas Omar. If she passes the next phase, he said, she could move to the U.S. in less than a year.